


The Only Good Snake

by Harukami



Category: Zone-00
Genre: Gen, Other, Spoilers, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-06
Updated: 2013-11-06
Packaged: 2017-12-31 16:15:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1033727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harukami/pseuds/Harukami
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>...is a dead snake. Tsukihiko agrees. Senryo maybe doesn't.</p>
<p>Volume 11 arrived today and I had a lot of feelings. (Hopefully nothing is too inaccurate, my Japanese is pretty lousy). Spoilers for vol 11 obviously.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Only Good Snake

He sits there with no more strength to even lift his arms, his empty water gun fallen between bruised and bloody knees. They'd really done what they could to drain every inch of regeneration from their bodies, he thinks, looking at the marks on his knees through the blur of tears. He hasn't kept a scrape on him since he first downed some Zone. Now when he can finally do it there's nothing. He's out of water bullets. He's out of drive. All he has in him is a choking, thick grief, and a desire to disappear.

Senryo is talking to Mayoko still, in soft words. Tsukihiko could probably make them out if he tried to, but he doesn't want to. He wants to completely stop hearing anything. The idea of hearing them talk about him would turn his stomach if he had the energy or the heart to be sick. He just stares at his empty gun, his fingers, his knees, and wills them to stop, wills himself to stop, wills the world to go away from around him if he can't go away from the world.

His tears keep coming, like by the time he emptied his gun the only water he had left to pull from anywhere came from inside him. He can't remember the last time he cried; he thinks, perhaps, he had been human at the time. It's a relief, though, that at least he's not making any sounds. He has this vague idea, not even really a memory, that crying is normally an ugly, noisy thing. Instead, hot tears just drip down his cheeks, off his nose and chin, and he's almost silent. His throat aches, though. Strange he can still feel that among everything else, every ache and pain in his body and heart, but he can. It feels like the inside of his throat is too wide for the column, like a scream he can't let go of is stretching his voice from the inside out and hammering against its limits.

_I failed_ , he thinks.

He's failed at everything. He failed to be loved. He failed to be human. He failed being saved. He failed drowning. He failed becoming a god. He failed to sleep for the rest of his life. He failed distributing Zone. He failed dying alongside Senryo. He failed killing himself.

_There's nothing left to fail,_ he thinks, but that's almost funny. He thinks it'd be funny if he could feel anything beyond the aching, yawning void he wanted to fall into. There's always something left to fail. Every one of his three hundred years has proven that.

Senryo's feet stop in front of him. Tsukihiko stares at them and doesn't raise his head. He doesn't want to see Senryo's face. He doesn't think Senryo will gloat -- the opposite. He thinks Senryo will have that sympathetic, understanding look on his face. The same look he had when he promised that they were in this together. The same look he had when he'd promised to die together. That liar. That sympathy is nothing but a lie. Senryo has always had something to live for.

"We didn't die together," Senryo says, finally.

Tsukihiko doesn't answer.

"We didn't die apart," Senryo adds.

He grits sharp teeth and keeps himself from answering still. He wants to become bitter. It has been so much easier, all these years, when he's had bitterness to fall back on. If he had bitterness again now, he'd be fine, he thinks. He'd have some defence to layer up over his drowning heart and tear at the world with. All he can find is the desire to feel bitterness again, though, not the bitterness itself. It's not even a full longing. He's not sure he's capable of that now. He feels completely dug out, like feeling anything will exhaust him so much he can't -- what? Live? It's not that easy, is it?

"One of us didn't die while the other lived, either," Senryo says.

Tsukihiko slowly lifts a hand and wipes at his tears. The salt stings injuries on his hand that he didn't even know he had. "I want to die," he says. "I can't kill myself right now, it seems. So you'd better kill me."

"I think," Senryo says, "we should try living."

_There's_ the bitterness. He'd thought it was gone but he's found it again. It's shallow, but it wells up from inside him like an old habit, slowly pumped up from the lowest part of his stomach. He flicks his tongue out between his teeth, tasting the rainy air and the lingering miasma, and says, "I tried that for three hundred years and only wanted to die the more. I was meant to die. I was a sacrifice. I only wished not to do it alone. I only wished to die with you, who was also meant to die back then. But she saved you then. And she saved you now. You're her familiar, after all."

Finally, he looks up at Senryo, sees that sympathetic, knowing look on his face.

"You're her familiar, and she's your witch," Tsukihiko says. "And I am nothing."

"I don't mean we should try living apart," Senryo says, and offers his hand.

Tsukihiko stares at it like it's some four-dimensional shape that can't be made sense of in this world. Some lovecraftian entity growing out of the end of Senryo's arm. What a stupid cat. "What, then?" Tsukihiko hisses. " _Together_?"

"Yes."

"With _her_?" He finally looks at Mayoko now. She's half-turned away, still bleeding from where Senryo had knocked the knife out of her hand to save her life, her hair in tattered ruins. Senryo had said he didn't have enough energy left to kill Tsukihiko, but he'd had enough to do that. Perhaps Senryo hadn't even known he had it until he thought he was going to lose his witch. She has tears on her face, and Tsukihiko doesn't believe them. A witch can rule through any means, manipulation or otherwise. Her tears will always win Senryo over, and so she will spill them if she needs to win Senryo back from Tsukihiko. 

"Yes," Senryo says, firmly. Perhaps that's what they'd been talking about. Perhaps that was Senryo's cost of living with her. Tsukihiko tries to imagine feeling happy about it.

"I can't."

"You lived with those guys. They can't be better than us."

"I can't live with a honeymooning couple in a situation like this," Tsukihiko says. 

"We-- we're not a couple!" Senryo has the gall to blush. It's amazing he even has enough blood left.

Tsukihiko picks up his gun, out of a desire to hold it, to use it, and then finds himself angry at the gun itself. It's empty. It's useless. When he needed it, it wasn't there. When he finally gave up on his dream of dying with company and tried to shoot through his own skull, it gave out. He flings it away from him like it had done so just to spite him. Useless thing. He's useless. Everything's useless. "You don't understand!" he says, and his voice breaks. "This is the end for me! I was supposed to die a long time ago, but I didn't, and my body is changing and becoming something foreign and I don't want it, I don't want to be in this body any more, I want to be free, I want to stop feeling all of this, I want--!"

Senryo's arms close around him.

"Oh, man," Senryo groans. "You're right, I don't get it! I'm not that smart, you know that. I don't get it, but I want to get it, and you're not alone anymore! Don't you get it? All this time you've been sniping about why was it always about me? Yeah, to me, maybe it is about me, but I've been thinking I had to choose between you, and you were both choosing me and maybe I don't have to! She didn't extend her hand to you, but I can, right? If I'm gonna be in the middle anyway, I might as well be in the middle, and maybe I don't get it, but I'm gonna find out, and you're not gonna die to hide it and I'm not gonna die to make you happy and her miserable because we're gonna live together and -- man! Just give it a try, okay? I tried it your way, so try it my way!"

He can't think of any words to say. He tries anyway, tries to find a retort inside him to spit out and instead an awful sound comes out, a gross, wet, hoarse " _Uuuuuu_." His vision blurs completely and he presses his face into Senryo's shoulder, bites down with sharp teeth to punish him and to hold on, to just get a grip on him that Senryo can't shake loose even if he changes his mind.

Tsukihiko wails.


End file.
